Published over a half century ago, Randall Jarrell's Poetry and the Age remains vital.

John Freeman

Poetry and the Age

by RANDALL JARRELL

University Press of Florida

$24.95 List Price

Poetry has been obscure as long as Vikings have worn helmets and emperors have worn nothing. This is not terribly surprising. Poetry is language refracted, metaphor tuned to an inner music. And ever since the nineteenth century, when the novel brought reading to the masses, most of us have preferred to read prose. Still, every few generations, a shiver of anxiety ripples through the literate world that poetry has become

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